Boeing Announces Its Plan To Go Toe To Toe With Elon Musk
You may have been hearing a lot about Boeing in the past couple weeks because the President-Elect has been tweeting about stuff that may or may not have zero facts behind it, but Boeing is still a top contender. They helped America beat to Soviets to the moon! They also make some pretty impressive aircraft. Did I mention they helped get us to the moon in 10 years after Kennedy said that’s the next frontier? Well, there’s a new space race and Boeing has announced it wants to beat SpaceX and Elon Musk to Mars.
Boeing Chief Executive Officer Dennis Muilenburg held a conference on October 4th that explained the company’s vision of the future of human spaceflight, with Boeing being the frontrunner for humans to that beautiful red planet in the sky.
“I’m convinced the first person to step foot on Mars will arrive there riding a Boeing rocket,”Boeing Chief Executive Officer Dennis Muilenburg said.
Boeing is currently working with NASA on developing a Space Launch System. Over at SpaceX, they’re trusting their Falcon Heavy Rocket to get humans to Mars. If you’ve been paying attention, and we at Social Underground have, the Falcon has been taking off and landing on platforms in the ocean. Not an easy feat.
Musk has set a date of 2018 as a deadline for an unmanned mission to Mars. Even more ambitious, he plans for 2025 to have a manned mission headed to Mars. Remember that it’s very close to those dates. In the year 2000, I would think this is so far off that there’s a chance, but 2025 is close for a manned mission, but 2018 is even close for an unmanned mission for SpaceX.
What’s great about Boeing and SpaceX competing is that they’re the only two companies in NASA’s Commercial Crew Program — the programs that takes astronauts to the International Space Station after they’re done using the Russian rockets to get there. Will it be Boeing or SpaceX? We’ll have to wait and see, but Boeing does have experience in landing us onto unforgiving landscapes in the past.
(Via Bloomberg)
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Jeff Sorensen is an author, writer and occasional comedian living in Detroit, Michigan. You can look for more of his work on The Huffington Post, UPROXX, BGR and by just looking up his name.
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